Monday, March 30, 2009

This past Friday, I did a lecture/presentation on Third Wave feminism. I had a pretty big crowd. Part of this was self-promotion & giving my students who attended extra credit. (Not many of them were mine, though. Lazypants.) I made an AWEsome flyer, and a lot of people were intrigued by that.

I thought about not doing the presentation. I signed up for it in the more optimistic, everything-is-possible start of this semester way back in January. As the semester has gone by, I've missed most of the other presentations because this has been such a weird "Spring" for me. So I just wasn't sure. I'm kind of in the "glass half empty" phase of the semester-- tired, frustrated, ready for summer. (Everyone gets there.... students & teachers alike.) Sometimes I am back in the plus, but sometimes it's just hard to do anything because it all seems to be overwhelmingly too much.

But then I thought-- you know, this is what I do. I like to teach, I hardly ever get the chance to justify simply talking about Feminism, and my brand of it, too. Yeah, I work it into some of my regular "comp" and literature lectures, but thus far, I haven't been lucky enough to teach a course that was specifically about this. So it was new ground for me, in a way.

I had a lot of fun, learned a lot. I had one person in the audience who wasn't really "feelin'" it and was not going to be convinced, I think. But I got a lot of "love" from students, including two today who were inspired to go to the bookstore to find some of the books on the handout I had available.

But it's made me think about what I do, and what I wish to keep doing, with my life. I will never quit teaching, no matter what. But it's possible that it may be a while until I'm in front of a classroom as the teacher of record. And I'm good with that. My lectures will just have to be over coffee or margaritas, delivered to one or two interested parties, for a while.

And that, my friends, is a glass more than half full kind of feeling. Sure, maybe it's one of those big margarita glasses. Just no salt please.